Robert W. Thurston

For the science fiction writer see Robert Thurston

Robert W. Thurston is an American historian, who is Professor of History at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He will retire from that position in May of 2015. Thurston is primarily known for work on the history of the Soviet Union, although he has also written on the Witch hunts in the Early Modern period and on coffee. He has published a variety of papers and books upon these topics. Currently he is Managing Partner at Oxford Coffee Company, www.oxfordcoffee.com

vita (resume) available at personal web site: robertwthurston@wordpress.com

Senior editor and contributor to Coffee: A Comprehensive Guide to the Bean, the Beverage, and the Industry, Rowman and LIttlefield, October 2013. Winner of an award from Gourmand magazine as the best book on coffee published in the U.S. in 2013. Highly recommended by Choice. Selected by Library Journal as one of the best reference books of 2013.

Recent talks on coffee: Annual symposium of the China Good Agri Products Association, Beijing, Sept. 2014. Talk on factors in branding ag products. European Coffee Awards, Paris, Nov. 2013. Trends in American coffee consumption. London Coffee Festival, May 2013. Doping the American housewife.

In November 1992 [Wasn't that a long time ago!], he argued in the Chronicle of Higher Education that the June 1992 exhibit entitled "Revelations from the Russian Archives", which was held at the Library of Congress, was overly biased against the Soviet Union. He remarked that the "library's accompanying glossy brochure highlighted only the repressive nature of the Soviet regime, ignoring its positive (though flawed) accomplishments." He noted that "Nothing appeared on the growth of education, upward social mobility, increased availability of medical care, urbanization or anything that might be considered positive." He went on to accuse James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress, of advocating "a single point of view" about the Soviet Union. The reporter Arnold Beichman, writing for the right wing Insight on the News newspaper, condemned Thurston for these statements, arguing that "something is drastically wrong with American social sciences" if the Chronicle of Higher Education allowed his comments to be published.^[1]

Bibliography

Russian history

• Liberal City, Conservative State: Moscow and Russia's Urban Crisis, 1906-1914 (1987). Oxford University Press.
• Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941 (1996). Yale University Press.
• The People's War: Responses to World War II in the Soviet Union (2000); anthology, edited by Thurston and Bernd Bonwetsch. University of Illinois Press.

Early Modern Witchcraft

• Witch, Wicce, Mother Goose: The Rise and Fall of the Witch Hunts in Europe and North America (2001). Longman.
  • 2nd edition: 'The Witch Hunts: A History of the Witch Persecutions in Europe and North America (2006). Longman.

American and world history

• Lynching: American Mob Murder in Global Perspective (2011). Ashgate. Link to a description of the book and to purchasing information:

http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409409083

Coffee

• Senior editor and contributor to Coffee: A Comprehensive Guide to the Bean, the Beverage, and the Industry Rowman and Littlefield, 2013.

References

Footnotes

Bibliography